US River System -- Focus On US Southwest -- April 19, 2022

An incredibly good article. A must-read. Archived. 

The thesis:

The US Southwest is in year 22 of a historic megadrought, which a recent study estimates is the region’s driest stretch in the past 1,200 years. This has strained the annual supply from the Colorado River’s many tributaries and heightened awareness and scrutiny of its use. The two largest dams on the river – the Glen Canyon Dam at Lake Powell and the Hoover Dam at Lake Mead – are essential to their respective local power grids. They also supply hard, numerical insight into how strained the water levels have become, with expectations at Lake Powell reaching crisis stage:

“Insufficient runoff has put the reservoir on a quick and dangerous descent to 3,490 feet of elevation – a water level so low that Glen Canyon Dam’s hydropower turbines can no longer operate. A key part of the Western power grid would be lost.

The city of Page and the LeChee Chapter of the Navajo Nation also would lose their drinking water because the infrastructure that supplies them could no longer function.

Not to mention that if Powell falls to 3,490 feet, the only way millions of acre-feet of Colorado River water can flow past the dam and downstream to sustain Lake Mead – the reservoir on which Arizona relies – is through four bypass tubes, which have never handled that kind of volume, particularly for an extended period.”

So Lake Powell's water levels?

All of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, Peter Zeihan getting a lot of exposure. From Doomberg this morning:

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the recent moves in and around the Arctic Circle have caused us, like so many others, to become reacquainted with the work of Peter Zeihan. Zeihan is a prolific author, strategic thinker, geopolitical consultant, and content creator whose views are as well researched as they are strongly held. His book Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World is particularly prescient, and the fourth chapter of the book – How to Be a Successful Country – is a useful framework for geopolitical study. According to Zeihan, a country’s territorial viability, agricultural capacity, demographic structure, and energy access dictate its relative standing on the international stage. Countless wars have been fought seeking to augment strengths and plug weaknesses along these parameters.

The first factor Zeihan defines as foundational to a country’s inherent strength is its internal natural water system, and few countries are as blessed as the US in this regard. Rivers represent cheap transportation, reliable irrigation for farming, critical fresh water for drinking, and a ready source of renewable electricity. The mighty Mississippi River – and its direct access to some of the most prolific agricultural plains in the world – gives the US an incredible geopolitical advantage. Here’s how Zeihan describes it (emphasis added throughout):

“But America’s Midwest is a place apart: The Greater Mississippi system includes over thirteen thousand miles of naturally navigable, interconnected waterways—more than the combined total of all the world’s non-American internal river systems—and it almost perfectly overlaps the largest contiguous piece of arable, flat, temperate-zone land under a single political authority in the world.”

Inspection of a US river map calibrated for water flow – like the one shown below – is revealing. Two things leap out right away. First, the Greater Mississippi system is truly huge. Second, if we apply Zeihan’s framework to regions within the country, it is obvious that the vastly populated Southwest is overdependent on the flows of the Colorado River. Given the dwindling volumes ushered through this critical channel in recent decades, this reliance is a vulnerability made only worse by the substantial self-interest and political wranglings arresting any alternatives for the region.

Much, much more at the link.